LAHORE, Pakistan (BP) -- Terror struck Christians in Pakistan's Balochistan Province Sunday (Dec. 17) as four terrorists allegedly linked with the Islamic State group (ISIS) attacked a church, killing at least nine worshipers and injuring more than 50 others.

Police and church officials told Morning Star News that four suicide attackers stormed the Bethel Memorial Methodist Church in the provincial capital, Quetta, in the southwestern part of the country. Read More

WASHINGTON (BP) -- The October death sentences for three Pakistani men demonstrate the threat of blasphemy laws in many countries to the life and liberty of Christians and other religious minorities.

The judgments for the Pakistanis -- all members of the Ahmadi Muslim sect -- came two months after the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) issued a report that showed more than one-third of the world's countries have blasphemy laws. Most of the blasphemy laws in those 71 countries not only transgress international human rights standards but fail to fully protect freedom of expression and impose unduly severe punishments on violators, according to the report. Read More

LAHORE, Pakistan (BP) -- Police in Pakistan beat a 14-year-old Christian boy to death on Monday, Oct. 9, because he had gotten into a fight with a Muslim classmate who tried to bully him into renouncing his faith, Morning Star News reported Oct. 11.

Arasalan Masih is the third Christian teenager to be killed in Pakistan since August.

Mushtaq Masih told Morning Star News that his son, Arsalan Masih, was a student at a private center in the Punjab province village of Jhabran Mandi, located in the ... Read More

LAHORE, Pakistan (BP) -- Families are still struggling a year after a suicide bomber killed more than 70 people and injured hundreds others in an attack targeting Christians at Easter in Lahore, Pakistan, International Christian Concern (ICC) noted on the event's March 27 anniversary.

At least 21 Christians were killed and 45 Christians injured when an Islamic State terrorist denoted a suicide vest, killing an estimated 75 people and injuring about 340 others during an evening Easter celebration in a public park. Read More

LAHORE, Pakistan (BP) -- A 70-year-old Christian in Pakistan was jailed on blasphemy charges on the same day 106 Muslims accused in a 2013 attack on a Christian colony were acquitted.

A mosque leader in the Lambanwali area north of Gujranwala, Punjab Province, on Jan. 28 accused Mukhtar Masih of writing two letters containing derogatory remarks about the Koran and Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, police records show. ... Read More

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (BP) -- The final appeal of a death sentence for Asia Bibi, a Christian mother imprisoned more than seven years over a blasphemy allegation, has been postponed; Islamic protestors, meanwhile, renew calls for her execution.

The appeal scheduled today (Oct. 13) for 51-year-old Aasiya Noreen, also known as Asia Bibi, was postponed after one of three justices set to hear the case recused himself, World Watch Monitor, a news service focused on global persecution of Christians, reported. Read More

LAHORE, Pakistan (BP) -- A Pakistani Christian mother will get her final court appeal Oct. 13 to avoid execution on a charge of blasphemy by Muslim women who objected to her drinking from a shared cup at a water well.

Pakistani's supreme court has announced it will hear the case of 51-year-old Aasiya Noreen, also known as Asia Bibi, whose execution had been temporarily suspended in July 2015, The Independent of London reported. Bibi was sentenced to death by hanging in 2010 on charges of insulting the prophet Mohammad while working in a field as a day laborer in 2009, and the Lahore High Court upheld her conviction four years later. Read More

Take steps to care as much about terror attacks in Pakistan, Turkey and elsewhere around the world as the one in Brussels, writes Travis Wussow, director of international justice and religious freedom for the SBC's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. Read More

LAHORE, Pakistan (BP) -- The death toll is rising from a suicide bombing targeting Christians in a crowded park on Easter Sunday in Lahore, Pakistan, with at least 75 dead and more than 368 wounded, 138 of them critically, based on reports from Morning Star News and CNN.

Already claiming responsibility for the evening attack and professing to have targeted Christians is the Jamaat-ul-Ahrar terrorist group, a splinter faction of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) that has professed allegiance to ISIS. Read More

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (BP) -- The effectiveness of a Supreme Court of Pakistan ruling that blasphemy laws be reformed to discourage false allegations hinges on the government's response to the order, a leader of the International Christian Concern watchdog group told Baptist Press.

The three-judge Pakistani bench called for reforms when it upheld the death penalty imposed upon Malik Mohammad Mumtaz Qadri ... Read More

Formed in 1946 by the Southern Baptist Convention, and supported with Cooperative Program funds, Baptist Press (BP) is a daily (M-F) international news wire service. Operating from a central bureau in Nashville, Tenn., BP works with four partnering bureaus (Richmond, Va.; Atlanta, Ga.; Nashville, Tenn.; and Washington, D.C.), as well as with a large network of contributing writers, photographers and editorial providers, to produce BP News.